


The Sorceress’ Requiem

by SilverShortyyy



Series: Not Even Hell Can Vouch For Us [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: slight Bellatrix/Sirius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 15:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12560000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: Bellatrix is out of Azkaban and finds her sanity slowly, slowly, slowly slipping away while she sinks deeper still into the endless ravine she’s fallen into. She is more mad these days, more insane; long ago she at least had a shaky grip on her wobbly mind. But in the rare occasion when her raging thoughts silence, for some reason, she thinks of Sirius.





	The Sorceress’ Requiem

Mussed black hair. Heavy-lidded eyes. Blood-kissed lips. Deep, flushed cheeks.

It’s like listening to an orchestra. Except the percussion beats too fast, the woodwinds blow too hard, the strings pluck too slow, and chance music from a distance adds to the anarchic melody polluting the atmosphere.

Mussed black hair. Heavy-lidded eyes. Blood-kissed lips. Deep, flushed cheeks.

She can’t listen to just one thing; she tries to pay attention to the running thumps and galloping beats of the percussion, but ends up swerving and swaying to the lulling and hushing echoes of the strummed strings. She tries to pay attention to the strum of the strings but is yanked over to the wail of the woodwinds, the players’ cheeks turning red from blowing too hard into the metal tubes with strategically poked holes.

Mussed black hair. Heavy-lidded eyes. Blood-kissed lips. Deep, flushed cheeks.

But among everything, she finds herself listening to the totality of the chaos. _Stop, stop, stop!_ But the noise can never be silenced, not even muffled. The screeching and beating and too-slow plucking gets louder and louder and louder, and in the distance she begins to hear screaming, screaming and wailing and _crying_ and she feels her skin become wet, her cheeks become trailed, her nails dipping in a warm, viscous, iron-tasting liquid—

In a light-headed daze, she remembers how years and years ago, she had as much time in her anarchic orchestra as she did in the real world.

“Something the matter, Bella?” A bat seems to be walking the marble halls of Malfoy Manor. Bellatrix nearly calls for Kreacher to get rid of the bat, but this Bat isn’t one for seaside caves.

“Something the matter with you?” She doesn’t like being talked to. Not right now. Maybe when she sees those perfect red eyes again, or if it‘s Cissy’s calming voice, then maybe she’d find conversation pleasant. She’s thankful most people have enough brain to keep away from her; it just appears this Bat doesn’t have as much brains as the average person.

That, or he’s recklessly _brave_.

“No, not today.” The Bat looks at her down his gigantic nose, his greasy hair nearly dripping his shoulders soaked with twenty-year-old hair oil. “Have a nice day, dear Bella.”

“Have a nice day.” She huffs as he stalks away from her like the creepy shadow he is. What a creepy man! Why do they even keep him around here? She clicks her heels onto the marble as she pulls herself away from her spot and away from that greasy old bat.

She is a civil pureblood witch. Well, no—Bellatrix is only civil when Bellatrix has to be.

Otherwise, she’ll gladly dispose of a person’s innards for them.

Bellatrix wanders the marble halls and past the moving portraits. Some raise their chins for her; they say she makes them proud. Some glare down at her; they say she brings shame to the pureblood name. But when she wants to hear none of it, none of their nonsense and oil paint-diluted promises, she listens instead to the anarchic orchestra always present at the back of her mind.

That anarchic orchestra has begun to play after theater hours since she came back from Azkaban. She thinks maybe they welcome her back, back into the real world, away from the dementors and those cold stone walls.

Then she remembers freezing nights in Azkaban, her laughter sounding so detached from her body, so frantic, and she joins in that anarchic orchestra that began playing longer days the longer she played in Azkaban.

She clicks her heels onto the marble and pushes herself up and off the floor. She thinks of green wallpaper, elf heads, and foreboding black dogs…

She thinks of home.

She closes the door to her chambers and finds the soft silken sheets sliding against her skin. Her velvet gown covers her in a sweet caress, sweet as the anarchic orchestra’s strum of strings and percussion beat. But, and she listens closely, the melody seems to have vanished. In its place, she sees a boy with unruly, Black hair bearing a mouth in need of cleaning, and Black eyes with a defiant gleam.

_Bellatrix was eight years old when he was born. The house had already begun to feel cramped with six-year-old Andromeda throwing tantrums whenever she didn’t get what she wanted and four-year-old Narcissa crying herself through the day and even more through the night, and eight-year-old Bellatrix had begun exploring what her magic can do, leaving combusted, mutilated, and dyed (or died) pests all around the house._

_Bellatrix had loathed the thought of having a male Black in the family. It meant she would no longer be the crown jewel, the Queen Black when the time came. She was a proud, forceful little girl; she was not letting some infant male take her rightful place as the supreme Black inheritor. She had all these thoughts for pranks and jokes on him, all the way until she went to Hogwarts and beyond, and she had even planned to launch a werewolf attack on him to turn him into a half-breed not worth the Black name._

_But, once her baby cousin got home, she could not even imagine letting him be left alone._

_“Take care of your siblings, Bella,” her father used to say when he and her mother would be away. “Don’t do anything to them while we’re gone.” And yet, she had never actually taken care of them, always doing everything she could to shut Narcissa up—and she once got close to ripping off baby Cissy’s vocal chords—and to keep Andromeda down—as in keep her glued on the floor._

_After baby Siri came, though, things were different._

_“Take care of your siblings, Bella.” Her father had told her while her mother waited outside. “And check on your cousin from time to time.” Aunt Walburga had to undergo check-ups then, just to make sure everything was okay—since Sirius had graciously kicked himself out of the womb—which left Bellatrix alone with her siblings and her cousin._

_Regardless of Andromeda’s wails and Narcissa’s cries, Bellatrix never left Sirius until she heard the elders arrive._

_She had rushed out of Sirius’ bedroom and gone to shut Narcissa up, having mastered that art after years of being left with wailing little sisters. But Sirius, Sirius never cried, Sirius only ever cried once in his childhood, once that Bellatrix wished she could forget sometimes._

_But she never could._

_Bellatrix was eleven when she had to leave for Hogwarts, as with every young witch and wizard. By then, Sirius was three. Andromeda was nine and Narcissa was seven, and bidding Bellatrix goodbye on the train platform had been her two sisters and a small, pouty boy._

_Though, and she noted then, he had never pouted before._

_“Where’s that little troublemaker, Siri?” She had whispered to him in the midst of the thickening crowds of people and train smoke. “Bella’s just gonna be away for a few months.”_

_“Don’t… Leave.” His words were thick with a child’s plea, so unlike a Black and unlike Sirius. His eyes were filling with tears, and he was trying and failing to put up a strong front. Bellatrix could see him trying to push the entire farewell off as an everyday occurrence, but the way she could see his eyes glisten told her it was a losing battle. “Don’t leave!”_

_“But I have to, Siri.” She pressed the pad of her thumb onto his cheek, wiping the almost-falling tears away. “You have to be strong without me, okay? Andy and Cissy will tease you if you don’t. And your Mommy and my Mommy and your Daddy and my Daddy will get mad._

_“And I’ll be sad because I’ll know you won’t be happy.” Bellatrix remembers the way her heart had cracked while trying to persuade your Sirius to let her go._

_“Come back?” He asked, his chubby hand grasping her thumb._

_“Of course, Siri. I’d never leave you.”_

_And when Bellatrix had turned to wave her family goodbye from the train carriage, she smiled to see Sirius no longer crying._

Bellatrix stares at the glass balcony and finds the curtains open, letting a narrow sliver of light to snake into her chambers. Forcefully, she pulls them shut, her magic pulling the silk closed and nearly gluing them together.

She doesn’t like it when this happens. She hates him. And so she wonders how she can’t escape the thought of him as easily as he does the thought of her. Maybe, she thinks, it’s easier to escape from one’s thoughts in sanity, contrary to her easily identifiable insanity. She doesn’t deny it; she’s insane. And sometimes she wishes her insanity could just block everything off, but when silence comes and her mind quiets, she can’t find any bit of her mind not wide open.

She hates it. Absolutely hates it.

She curls into herself on the bed sheets, thanking Cissy for giving her and Rodolphus two different rooms.

Without his scent on the sheets, Bellatrix can still feel the warmth from her memories with Sirius.

_Bellatrix was thirteen when Sirius first rebelled against his mother. And his mother. And his Black name and his family, and Bellatrix remembers believing it was all a phase because she had taught him better._

_“But what’s wrong with them, Mother? They do magic too!”_

_“Their magic is filthy. Their blood is even filthier. Their line had mingled with Muggles, and Muggles are the most impure species this world has ever known.”_

_“But they look the same as us. What makes us a different spee-shees?”_

_“Quiet, child! If you were anything like your cousin Bellatrix, you’d stop questioning with the most stupid questions and accept the facts as they are!”_

_That night, Sirius had sneaked into Bellatrix’s room with defiant eyes, shaking her awake in the silence of 1:30 am._

_“Bella, Bella.” He whispered. “What’s so wrong with Muggles?”_

_“Siri, go to sleep.” She had answered him, groggily. “We can talk about this in the morning.”_

_“But I can’t sleep, Bella.” He had the widest, most stubborn eyes. Bellatrix could never resist him. “I need to know now.”_

_“Alright, alright. What do you want to know?”_

_“What makes Muggles so ‘filthy’ like mother said?”_

_“They don’t have magic.”_

_Bellatrix remembers Sirius staring at her with combatting thoughts evident in his eyes, and with the defiant soul she knew resided behind his eyelids, she thought he’d send another argument back._

_He never did._

_“Can I sleep beside you tonight?”_

_“Why? Scared of the dark?”_

_“I don’t know how to do warming charms. And it’s so cold. And you do.”_

_And they both knew Bellatrix couldn’t do magic outside of school. But Bellatrix let the weak excuse pass and cuddled Sirius until he fell asleep._

_He looked so perfect that night, in her arms. He was a small five year old with unruly Black hair, and she could see him ruling the world with her as his queen._

_That night she realized she didn’t mind ruling beside him. They would rule the world together, as equally dynamic and powerful people._

_Bellatrix was fifteen when she first spent the night in bed with someone. She couldn’t stop thinking what Sirius would be like at this age, if he’d be in bed with someone like she was. But he was still seven and at home, still four years away from Hogwarts, two years too many for her to wait and see what he’d be like as a student._

_She couldn’t help realizing that the first time she came was because she was imagining her bedmate to be fifteen-year-old Sirius._

_When she’d come home for break, she couldn’t believe what she heard from his mouth. And try as she might, she couldn’t change his mind._

_“There’s nothing wrong with Mudbloods! They’re just wizards who weren’t born from wizards, and so what if their parents couldn’t do magic? They could! Blood had nothing to do with it; if it did, then why do they have magic?”_

_“Exactly why they’re filthy, Siri! They don’t have pure magic. It’s been contaminated by generations of Muggles who don’t even understand magic! Blood has everything to do with it!”_

_“But if their magic isn’t pure, why can it still be powerful?”_

_“Where do you even get your arguments?” She couldn’t believe it. He was going to be her King! What was he doing? “Did you just waltz in a Muggle town and think, ‘they’re nice people, they’re not filthy’?! They can pretend, doofus! They pretend all the time!”_

_“And you don’t?! And mother really loves me, and Narcissa actually cares about more things than herself?!”_

_The atmosphere that had held shouted words going back and forth was still. He was seven—he couldn’t possibly know what he was talking about. But Bellatrix knew better than to underestimate that defiant gleam, underestimate those eyes that she looked into and saw herself in, and him, and they’re so much like each other that she didn’t understand what had gotten into him._

_‘Give it some time,’ she thought to herself. ‘Maybe it’s just a phase.’_

_“Suit yourself then.” Her voice had gotten dangerously quiet. She didn’t quite recognize the voice slithering past her lips, and when she turned her back and walked away from him, the click of her heels felt like a sound not so much her; in fact, she felt like she was watching herself walk away from Sirius._

_She imagined a rift between them the farther she walked away. Deep inside of her, she felt a rift tear itself open, and she silently wished he wouldn’t be too far from her._

_Bellatrix was nineteen when she knew Sirius was never going to come back. That is, the Sirius she used to know. She told herself she never really knew him, but then the face of the two-year-old she had done pranks with would pop into her mind and, she thought, she had known the person he used to be._

_Even if he had just been a child._

_It had been years since they looked at each other without malice and loathing. Especially on his part._

_“I hate you, cousin! I hate you and your ideals and your stupid tattoo—!”_

_“It is **not** a tattoo, you spoiled little brat! It is a mark, a mark of loyalty, a mark of allegiance, a mark that your stupid, rancid, contaminated little mind couldn’t possibly understand after all the defending you’ve been doing on the part of little Muggles.” The sight of him easily infuriated her in those days. She could never quite wrap her mind around how she could see him as her king, long, long ago. “And not to mention the betrayal you have done to our family! Gryffindor, you are? Rubbish!_

_“You disgust me, Sirius.”_

_“And **you** disgust **me**.” He had left then, with his eyes full of rage and hate. Nowhere in the depth of his Black eyes did Bellatrix see any regret, any recollection of anything from those times long ago. But then, and Bellatrix knew it, he had been all of two years old when they had gotten along._

_And that was a long time ago, probably too long for him to remember._

Bellatrix awaits the return of the anarchic orchestra. Anything, anything to get her mind off that little brat. But here where she’s alone, she lets herself fall apart, and when her mind is particularly clear and her heart particularly tired of hiding, she feels and picks at the cracks and brushes over the pieces. She lets herself go, and for the few times in her life that she can and does let herself, she confesses the only clear truth she knows in her life.

She misses Sirius.

_She was twenty-four when he left. She remembered wanting to burn his room down, burn all the clothes he left and all the stuff he permanently stuck to the walls. She was proficient enough; she could create a Fiendfyre to wipe his existence from the house, Fiendfyre strong enough to burn down the entirety of Hogwarts, and she wouldn’t have it lose control. She could soak everything in Flamethanol, and she’d chase away the embers so that everything burned with that sweet toxicity, that scent of death and demise that he had brought upon his room._

_But when she entered his bedroom, it just smelled too much like him._

_She wanted to burn the curtains. She closed them instead._

_She had lit the edges of a randomly lying handkerchief, willing the room to smell like smoke. She wanted to burn the sheets, burn his pillow, burn his clothes and his closet—_

_She remembered hiding under his bed, and him crawling beside her when they were playing hide and seek once. They had hid there for hours—she was ten and he was two—and she had gotten a scolding from Andromeda for keeping Siri where “he could’ve caught a cold”. He did, in fact, get a cold after that, if only for Andromeda’s refusal to light the fireplace before scolding Bellatrix._

_She remembered rolling her eyes when he had pleaded with her to stay until he fell asleep, as if there was a boggart hiding in the closet. Bellatrix had opened it up with nothing coming out, and although she had half-convinced him, he was persistent. ‘His persistence would be useful in the future.’ She had thought then, then when she saw him ruling beside her as the supreme Blacks._

_She walked over to his closet and opened it. Maybe he’d forgotten what he kept, deep beneath all his stuff, long long ago._

_“Wingardium Leviosa.” Had she been in her normal state of mind, she would have simply used Accio._

_But the scent of his clothes were intoxicating; his memory and the idea of him were all around her, threatening to take hold of her throat and throttle her to unconsciousness._

_She levitated his piles of filthy clothes away, unveiling a small, ornate, wooden box._

_She remembered his voice the first time he opened it, revealing a beautiful diamond necklace._

_“This is for you, cousin Bella,” he had said, before his days of Muggle-defence. “So you’ll always remember the days we have together.”_

_She had refused to let another second pass by with her eyes on the box. The levitated pile of clothes thudded angrily back into its place, her eyes trained onto the smoking handkerchief and eyelids keeping anything unwanted from trailing down._

_He had betrayed her._

_And she heard the bang of the drums and the clash of the cymbals, and she swore in that moment to hate him for all eternity; she swore she would be the one to end him, to **kill** him._

_She burned the handkerchief up before slamming the door shut behind her._

She had been young and over-reactive. That is, to say, in her mental state back then. She would be more likely to explode now, with her sanity hanging on the thinnest, weakest link, and yet, she hadn’t. Her Lord proves to be her best choice yet. Not only is he keeping her from going berserk, but he is the sheer reason for her being, the sheer reason for her life.

And for that, she would hold onto her sanity.

Softly, the anarchic orchestra reenters. She lets it come, and instead of the melancholic nostalgia of what was long gone, she replaces it with rage at the cousin she had since vowed to abhor.

For tonight, she will hate Sirius once more.

An anarchic orchestra. A malicious smile. Deep, flushed cheeks.

Blood-kissed lips. Heavy-lidded eyes.

Mussed black hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Harry Potter, and therefore these two wonderful Blacks, are not mine. Flamethanol is my creation though. Hope y’all liked it!


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